COLIN Wood, a volunteer at Newbold-on-Avon Rugby Club, hopes to stage a wheelchair rugby match on a grass pitch this summer in what would be a world first.
Wood and fellow local rugby player Damian Gray, who co-owns Adaptive Sports Innovations (ASI), hope to open up the world of rugby to wheelchair users on grass pitches with their latest chair design set to be finished this summer.
The new design can be retrofitted to a sports wheelchair to open up opportunities in rugby, football, hockey and many more sports all on grass pitches.
Inventor, Wood, said: “If William [Webb Ellis] was alive today he would have embraced this out of the box thinking and loved the fact that the game he spurned is now moving into a new era.”
Gray added: “It’s the perfect time to be looking at this new direction, last year’s Wheelchair Rugby World Cup was a great hit with the public.
“The speed, skill, passion, but it’s not exactly the same. Current wheelchairs cannot run smoothly on grass.
“Ours can and it doesn’t cause damage to the lovingly cared for pitches, it’ll make rugby a truly accessible sport for all.”
ASI are in talks to stage a match at Murrayfield in Scotland with a newly-formed Great Britain and Ireland (Barbarians) wheelchair rugby team.
The pair are also working on other innovations such as boxing training mats for the blind, VR Rugby interactive systems to allow players to play across the world, a new boxing glove designed to reduce injury and increase comfort and neck and headgear products that monitor concussive impacts in real time.
They also plan to hold mental health training workshops to help those struggling with everyday life through sport.
